Not even GNOME itself could ignore the GNOME 3 criticism for much longer. "As part of the planning for the DropOrFixFallbackMode feature, we've decided that we will compile a list of supported gnome-shell extensions. This will be a small list, focused on just bringing back some central 'classic' UX elements: classic alt tab, task bar, min/max buttons, main menu. To ensure that these extensions keep working, we will release them as a tarball, just like any other module."

Red Hat has announced That RHEL 7 will ship with Gnome 3, but most system admins don't use a graphical interface very often so I doubt they'll care too much. There were rumors that Debian was going to change their default to Xfce because they were having trouble fitting Gnome 3 on one Live Cd but I guess they figured out a way to do it and Gnome is still their default at the moment.

The interesting one to watch will be Red Hat. They've always been a strong financial supporter of the Gnome Project and if the Shell does actually end up cutting into their profits and they drop support for it. Gnome is going to have some real problems...